Page 24 of Hard-Hearted Highlander

If she believed he would be offended, she was very much mistaken. He didn’t want to speak to her, either—the fewer words, the better.

But strangely, Rabbie did want to look at her. He was loath to acknowledge that she was quite appealing.Quiteappealing. His gaze slid down her body, to those boots that were so incongruent with the woman who wore them.

“What?” she asked impatiently, and Rabbie realized he hadn’t responded to her declaration she didn’t want to speak to him.

“Your boots.”

She glanced down. “Do you object to even myboots?”

He didn’t object to anything. Quite the contrary—he couldn’t possibly care.

She rolled her eyes when he didn’t respond right away. “Ofcourseyou do. Are they too English for you?”

“I donna object—”

“You object to everything about me,” she snapped. “You’ve made it quite obvious.”

Rabbie was taken aback by her accusation. Surprised, really, and he’d not been truly surprised in a very long time. It felt odd in his head and chest, tingling as if an ague was settling in. “Because I donna allow you to challenge me doesna mean I object to you, lass.”

“Oh?” she said, shifting her weight onto her hip. “Well,Iobject toyou.”

“Aye, you’ve been bloody well clear about it. A man can only wonder what has happened to a woman to have turned her into such a shrew.”

She gasped, affronted.

“Aye, you heard me,” he said. “A shrew. A harridan.”

Her lovely eyes narrowed. “You’rehardly a prize.”

“I’ve no’ said I am, have I? I donna understand your resentment, on my life I donna—you’re no’ the one I’m forced to wed.”

She gave a shout of nearly hysterical laughter at that. “ThankGodI am not. But my friendisforced to marry you, and you have treated her very ill!”

“That again,” he said with a flick of his wrist. “Another rebuke of my manners.”

“A rebuke of yourlackof them,” she said angrily. “I happen to care very much for Avaline, and that she must wed a brute who is so utterly indifferent to her is not to be born.”

Rabbie didn’t care to be called a brute and felt his temper rising. “I’ve no’ touched your precious charge, and I am no brute. You’re a wee fool if you believe that because a man and woman are bartered into matrimony, affection must accompany it.”

She hesitated at that statement. “I don’t believe that at all. But I do believe civility must accompany it.”

“Civility,”he said acidly. “Was it civility, then, that the English showed the men of these hills? Isthatwhere you have learned it?”

Her eyes narrowed and from a distance of a few feet, he could almost feel the sparks coming out of them. She moved toward him, and Rabbie wondered if she indeed meant to strike him. “Iam not to blame for what happened here, Mr. Mackenzie, and neither is Avaline. I don’tknowwhat has happened here, other than the king’s forces put down an attempt at treason, as well they should have.”

“Isthatwhat you believe?” he asked, disbelieving.

“Have you seen any of us don a red coat?” she exclaimed, casting her arms wide. “Can you not, in that black heart of yours, perhaps try and understand how difficult this is for Avaline?”

“Forher?”he roared. “I canna abide the lass, Miss Holly. There is naugh’ to recommend her. She is a bairn—”

“You can’t possibly know what she is, given that you scarcely address her at all. She is very kind—”

“She is cowardly,” he snapped.

The maid’s skin was turning pink. “She means well,” she said through gritted teeth.

“She doesna know what she means,” he returned. “She is a lamb, a lass scarcely out of her governess’s lead.”